Travis County Commissioners Court
November 3, 2009,
Item 22
>> number 22.
to consider and take appropriate action on request to pay membership invoice from the national association of counties (naco).
this amount is budgeted.
but ...
but the request came to my office and I wasn't quite sure of what to do, so I thought it would be a good idea for us to get input from other county managers who may interact with naco more than court members and we did get some feedback.
>> yes, we did, judge.
good afternoon, judge Biscoe and members of the court.
the naco dues for this year will be $14,879 and as part of the court's discernment about whether or not to pay those dues, did I a survey of executive managers and of some other county officers to see whether or not -- just to make the case for the value that we get out of this.
i would say that the general answer was that staff and some of our county departments do take advantage of webinars that naco offers, that sort of a thing.
to increase their knowledge, particularly during this year when the federal stimulus money has come out.
a number of our staff have participated in naco webinars and specifically in a conference.
during the time in January and February and really leading into March, when the legislation was first being passed, it was a big bill, in a we relied upon naco quite a bit for some of the information that we provided to the court about what was in the bill, what was out of the bill, what opportunities for counties were there.
so on balance I would say that we probably got in the last year our $14,000 worth out of our membership in naco.
as with anything else, I think sherri flemming put it very well in the comments that I provided to the court from her.
we will get more out of it to the extent that we are more engaged in it and more involved in it.
the other factor that I thought was interesting was the comment from Karen norris, the executive director of the Texas association of counties, who pointed out that we will have an elected official from Texas will probably be the next president of naco, that would give us an opportunity probably, you know, at some extent, an opportunity to participate more heavily, even at the Commissioner and elected official level if we wanted to.
i think that the county treasurer is here and also participates quite a bit in naco, I would like for her to speak for herself, invite her to.
i don't have to invite her.
>> of course you do.
dolores ortega carter, county treasurer.
thank you for the opportunity to visit with you.
i did visit with your staff yesterday by phone on some of you and in person with some of you as well.
i just wanted to let you know that naco and most significantly the large urban county caucus is really involved in working with the obama administration to look for additional stimulus funding as well as one of the things that I think is most important to us, is that instead of it going to the state level, that it comes directly to counties, so that we cut out the middle man and we get our portion of the money and put it to use, to great use.
so I hope that you vote in favor of this.
and if you have any questions, I will be glad to answer them.
>> cyd also says that our purchasing -- our purchasing agent, that we use the purchasing cooperatives in naco.
>> that's correct.
>> judge whitley of fort worth is not present as of yet, but --
>> he's first vice-president.
>> very active, he did phone yesterday.
when we were dealing with gasb 45 we were trying to communicate with counties nationwide, it was an interesting network.
the other thing is that I have seen those webinars, some of them cost like $99, but they all look very, very interesting, you have got to set aside the time.
i assume if you listen in for an hour and you want a hard copy of the presentation, I've never asked for it, but, you know, I have -- I have told myself that I should participate more, it's just a matter of taking the time to do it.
but the topics really are timely.
>> you know, judge, just as an example, they send out, I believe, it's at least monthly an e newsletter that summarizes a lot of the initiatives that naco is doing.
not so much in the advocacy legislative congressional area, but just their internal programming.
i was looking through the sample of this last month's newsletter that I sent to the members of the court and for instance they have a -- very much a working group and a position paper they have just put out on jail population management which was the subject of an agenda item for the court this morning.
they have a webinar on storm water runoff coming up next week, which was an agenda item for the court.
so a lot of issues that the court is looking at in the context of Travis County of course are issued shared by other counties and naco can become a resource to us in terms of finding out what other counties are doing, what best practices are, what's working in other places.
>> uh-huh.
>> questions or comments?
>> yeah.
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> thank you very much.
>> thank you very much.
>> thanks.
The Closed Caption log for this Commissioners Court agenda item is provided by Travis County Internet Services. Since this file is derived from the Closed Captions created during live cablecasts, there are occasional spelling and grammatical errors. This Closed Caption log is not an official record the Commissioners Court Meeting and cannot be relied on for official purposes. For official records please contact the County Clerk at (512) 854-4722.
Last Modified:
Tuesday, November 3, 2009 1:40 PM
